Pages

Sunday, 7 September 2014

Schezuan Plum Pork using Brined Pork

I read in
Michael Ruhlman's book that brining meat is a good thing to do.I do have trouble getting lean cuts of pork
tender so I decided to give it a go.

To brine
the pork, I salted it with sea salt and then put it into a container and just
covered it with water.I also added some
white peppercorns, yellow mustard seeds, a bay leaf and some Thai fish
sauce.I didn't have time to brine it
for very long – just under 3 hours.

I then cut
the pork up into pieces and made this Schezuan
Plum Pork in much the same way I would make any Schezuan (or is it
Sichuan?) dish.

First I
fried off a little red curry paste in coconut milk and then added freshly ground
Sichuan pepper and coriander seeds.At
this stage I also put in ½ tsp of tamarind paste (for the sour element), some
grated ginger and some fish sauce.

Then in
went the pork followed by some maple syrup and ¼ cup of plum sauce (the sweet
elements)

My
apologies for the lack of food styling.My better half kindly put the pork into the serving dish and did not
faff about trying to make it look pretty.

The verdict on the brining –
well the pork was ok but not sensationally tender – I'll give it another go
with a longer brining time and maybe a bit more salt.

7 comments:

I've had good luck with brining pork but I've normally kept in the brine for at least 8 hours so maybe that was the difference? The dish sounds delicious! I'm always looking for different ways to use pork.